Journal Description
Media, War & Conflict is a major international, peer-reviewed journal that maps the shifting arena of war and conflict in media environments and ecologies. It explores cultural, political, social and technological transformations in the conduct, outcome and consequences of intensively mediated war.
Media, War & Conflict is the first inter- and multi- disciplinary journal to be dedicated to this field. It publishes substantial research articles, essays and reviews. It solicits submissions from academics, professionals and practitioners. The editors are looking for innovative work that contributes to existing debates and identifies emerging challenges in the convergence of media, war and conflict.
Topic coverage includes how media, war and conflict converge in subjects such as:
- Journalism and witnessing
- Security, politics and militaries
- Art, aesthetics, photography, film and popular culture
- Technologies, spatialities and architectures
- Aftermath, reconciliation, peace processes
- Memory, commemoration and archives
- Identity and embodiment
- Practices, cultures and ethics
- Audiences and engagement
- Narratives, legitimation of war and peace
Journal Feed
- by Ali M AbushbakMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. The 11-day war in May 2021 between Israel and Palestine (Gaza) is worth investigating as a phenomenon of recording war testimonies and memories by civilian mobile phone users. This article explores mobile phone usage by Palestinian civilians to record and document everyday war narratives. The users document, archive and disseminate diverse war memories on various social media platforms. Semi-structured (ethnographic) interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) are included in the methodological design to understand the patterns of mobile phone activism by civilians during Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Wall in Gaza. The authors […]
- by Christiern Santos OkholmMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. Despite extensive scrutiny of how Russia has weaponized information, little work has been done on how it takes different audiences into account when designing its strategic narratives. Although scholars and practitioners agree on the importance of fitting narratives to audiences, the fact that Russia builds knowledge on audiences and that its practices are informed by a Soviet legacy of information warfare, little is known about the strategies Russia uses to adapt its strategic narratives to audiences. Through a comparative narrative study, the article investigates how Russian state media promote different narratives on Nord […]
- by Salsabil M AbdalbakiMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. Framing is a central concept during times of dispute because it can escalate the dispute or push it toward cooperation. Contributing to the automatic identification of frames in conflict studies, this article aims at examining the dynamics of the main media frames emphasized by Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. These frames represent the factors of power and hydro-hegemony between the three countries, including the geographic location, military intervention, mediation, agreements and economic dimensions. Keyword-Assisted Topic Models (KeyATM) are implemented to analyse the English governmental and non-governmental newspapers that […]
- by Antonio Prieto-AndrésMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. The public’s understanding of the situation of refugees largely depends on how they are represented by the media. This article analyses this representation by studying photographs that appear in four mainstream Spanish newspapers of varied political orientation, comparing two paradigmatic examples: that of Afghan refugees versus Ukrainian refugees. The objective of this analysis is to determine the differences and similarities between how each case is covered, using a mixed quantitative and qualitative content analysis method to determine the images’ denotative and connotative aspects, based on ‘framing theory’. Findings show that, although all the […]
- by Bartosz HamarowskiMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article investigates the role of social media platforms in the visual representation of the Bucha massacre perpetrated by Russian forces during the aggression against Ukraine in 2022. By considering the interconnectedness of the online and offline spheres, the authors explore the impact of social media on the coverage of the massacre. The study focuses on a comprehensive analysis of 6,185 images disseminated on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram between 29 March and 15 September 2022. Through an analysis of the intricate dynamics between war crimes, visual representations and social media platforms, the article […]
- by Hagos NigussieMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article examines the use of citizen journalism for social mobilization in war-affected Tigray. A mixed approach was used, involving individual interviews, focus group discussions and a quantitative content analysis. The results revealed that citizen journalists provided information for community members to unite, support each other and make informed decisions. This was valuable for women and girls, as the allied forces used rape and hunger as weapons of war. Citizen journalists have inspired people to discuss war-related issues, enlightening capable individuals to join the Tigray Defence Forces. They travelled long distances to send […]
- by Ben Arthur ThomasonMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article documents a covert propaganda and civil society operation perpetrated by a consortium of Western governments, private contractors, and NGOs to justify and facilitate regime change in Syria by whitewashing and assisting rebel groups. Using leaked documents from key government contractors, corroborated with journalistic, academic, NGO, and government research already released, the author outlines their rebel media infrastructure to create news stories and feed them to Syrian, regional, and international outlets. This propaganda synergized with administrative programs that built social services in rebel-held territories, constructing media and civil society façades of legitimacy […]
- by Amir Hamza MarwanMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. The fall of Kabul signified the termination of the democratically elected government in Afghanistan and reinstated the Taliban as the prevailing authority in the country. The ascension of the Taliban in Afghanistan holds significant importance considering the profound suffering experienced by both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This study looks at how well-known Pakistani and Afghan television channels, specifically Geo News, PTV News and TOLO News, covered the fall of Kabul in 2021 for eight days. The study utilizes content analysis as a research methodology. The authors’ primary aim was to determine if the selected […]
- by Silas UdenzeMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article analyses the underlying and immediate triggers of Nigeria’s EndSARS protest and their interconnectedness. Leveraging Braun and Clark’s reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with 11 participants along with the ethnographic approach, the authors constructed a broader theme termed ‘EndSARS – An Umbrella’. They identify three primary themes (youth unemployment, endemic public sector corruption/poor police welfare and poverty) as the root causes of the EndSARS protest. In addition, they single out one theme (police – perennial human rights abuse) as the immediate cause. They contend that these prevalent socio-economic challenges, commonly experienced among […]
- by Christopher McMahonMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print.
- by Ryan ShafferMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print.
- by Kateryna ZaremboMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. In modern warfare, digitalization has blurred the line where civilian ends and military begins. Embedded in the participative warfare theoretical paradigm, this article looks into how the information and communication technologies (ICT) enable civic resilience under the conditions of the foreign armed aggression. Specifically, the authors explore how smartphones and smartphone applications empowered the Ukrainian civil society in the aftermath of the Russian full-scale invasion of 2022. Based on an online survey and semi-structured interviews, the article highlights how the device and its features not only allowed civilians to adapt to living in […]
- by Nhung NguyenMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. Using the country image repair framework, this study analyzed two opinion columns in major Russian state-controlled media outlets with content related to the Russian–Ukraine conflict, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, from 24 February 2022 to 20 May 2022. A thematic content analysis was used to examine 60 articles by RT and 70 articles on Sputnik. Results from the analysis determined that the five strategies of country image repair, except for mortification, were used in an attempt to legitimize the conflict in Ukraine and restore the image of Russia. Theoretical and practical implications of […]
- by Maria Isabel Garcia GarcíaMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. The research analyses the representation that different jihadist organizations make of women through their official propaganda. The aim is to analyse the construction of the feminine ideal designed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra through their leading magazines and to identify if there are differences in their representation of women. A content analysis is carried out on the narrative in which females are portrayed by those organizations. The study is also supported by a quantitative analysis of three features, which provide data on prominence of women in […]
- by Felix Olajide TalabiMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. The goal of this study was to examine the efficacy of art therapy in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the propensity to quit journalism among Nigerian journalists covering banditry attacks. The researchers utilized a quasi-experiment as the design for the study and sampled 327 journalists. The result of the study showed that at baseline, journalists reported high PTSD symptoms and a propensity to quit journalism, but after the intervention, journalists who received the art therapy intervention reported a significant drop in their PTSD symptoms and the propensity to quit […]
- by Melissa R MeadeMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This study examines the way in which two major Spanish newspapers, El País and El Diario Vasco, framed the 11 March 2004 (11-M) Madrid train bombings through peace journalism or war journalism, based on Peace Studies theorist Johan Galtung’s classification. An analysis of the news articles in the immediate aftermath of the bombings finds both frames present. The incumbent Spanish government initially tried to use the news media as a vehicle to present a premature interpretation that the Basque separatist group ETA perpetrated the attacks, even trying to pass a United Nations resolution. […]
- by Evan WeissMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. As part of the War on Terror, the US conducted at least 378 air and drone strikes in Yemen from 2002 to 2023. While primarily targeting members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), these strikes have killed over 1,000 people, including more than 125 civilians. This research aims to understand the broader societal impact of US military action as shown on Twitter, now known as ‘X’. The authors take a mixed-methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative data to investigate this impact. They perform word- and tweet-level analyses on the content and […]
- by Florian ZollmannMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article assesses how Western mainstream news media framed causal factors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of the Ukraine. The article is based on a synthesis and integration of scholarly studies as well as a primary data analysis of Western mainstream newspaper reporting. The research firstly conducts an integrative literature review investigating how Western mainstream news media have reported on Russia and the new Cold War more broadly. Using this as a backdrop, a quantitative and qualitative content study investigates how causes of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were framed in the US, the […]
- by Matthew TaylorMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print.
- by Emily FauxMedia, War & Conflict, Ahead of Print. This article makes a necessary intervention in Critical Nuclear Studies which thus far lacks engagement with popular culture since the Cold War. There is a significant gap in our knowledge about contemporary representations of nuclear weapons and their significance for nuclear politics in the current moment. Using Oppenheimer (2023) as a catalyst, this article navigates a setting central to the origin story of nuclear weapons: the desert. The desert is shown to have a complex literal and symbolic history that is intertwined with nuclear politics and contributes to nuclear weapons’ continued mythological status […]